Category — art

The electronics I’ve brought to the Holy Land are slowly decaying.  First, it was the battery for my Mac, which conveniently died when I got to Israel, the closest thing to a store being an idea of constructing one in Tel Aviv.  Even if there were one nearby, I doubt I could afford to do anything except sit at the ‘Genius Bar’ and look pretty.  Yesterday, it was my digital camera.  It was a cheap model I bought at Target a little over a year ago.  Before you know it, poof.  A click of the shutter and the sensor goes out.  One can easily be seduced by technology, but when it malfunctions, you realize how dependant you’ve become.  We all have histories, some past, we lived without the latest gadgets before.  How quickly we forget.

That past continues to die out.  The up-and-coming generations are already born in a high-wired world.  Those who don’t have easy access to those features of life are viewed as being “behind the times”.  I guess this isn’t new.  We just have to struggle to create a balance, myself included, between the technological world and the organic.   One thing that I’ve still been able to rely on is my film SLR and I attempt to take photos around the Arc at the Bahá’í World Centre, among other places, with some trusted friends who are probably more into photography than I am.   I wouldn’t call it a passion, but I still do it because there’s an ever-present desire to participate in some creative endevour. 

If you can’t beat technology, you may as well use it to your advantage [in a positive way of course!]

The other night I met this guy at a coffee shop, a pilgrim enjoying his last full day in Haifa before returning to home with his brothers.  He talked about his interests, split talents in the sciences and the arts, a desire to do more meaningful service in life as well as deepening his participation in a few other things.   He seemed focused for his young years.  The Bahai world is small, everyone seems to say when they bid themselves farewell.  This is true, and more than likely I could run into him again.  In the meantime, I was briefly inspired by his dedication to some mutual interests and managed to spend most of my day in good company, reading, and painting.

My anxiousness and inner-critic sometimes gets in the way of doing anything, so I made myself start painting the canvas without stressing too much about a plan.  The only problem with not having a plan is that my mind changes so much during the process that it’s hard to develop something coherent.  Thankfully oil paints are slow drying and that I could change my mind, even days later.

The verdict:

A work in progress.  The art show is coming up next month and registration is due to be submitted in a few days.  I’m fairly certain that I won’t have anything finished in that time that I would feel confident presenting, but the deadline has gotten me thinking more about trying to steer myself back toward having a more consistent creative outlet.  I’m trying to gather as much inspiration as I can, through google images, nature, blogs, my own musings, and yes, pilgrims & other such artists.